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Southwestern Historical Quarterly

difficulty encountered in supplying the distant western posts. Essentialmedicines and equipment, necessarily shipped from the East, were under-standably slow in arriving; and heavy losses from damage in transit werecommonplace occurrences.49Because of its many shortcomings and disappointments, frontier servicewas a frustrating and unrewarding experience for the army's doctors. Butthey kept at their tasks and, all things considered, compiled a highly credit-able record. Their medical reports for the Military Department of Texasduring the years between the war with Mexico and the Civil War reflecttheir struggle against the incursion of disease and injury in the antebellumSouthwest. But these reports, it is important to note, should not be viewedmerely as a record of the devotion to duty and hard work of Texas's medi-cal officers. In light of the paucity of trustworthy firsthand accounts andreliable official statistics relating to the state's medical history, the statisticscompiled by army doctors provide an important window on the health ofearly Texas, for, without doubt, the soldier and the settler, in close contact,exposed to the same environmental conditions, and performing similartasks, shared comparable medical problems.49Statistical Report, II, 351, 353; Bender, The March of Empire, I2o (quotation);Barrett, "Transportation, Supplies, and Quarters for the West Texas Frontier Underthe Federal Military System," 92. There are frequent references to the absence or short-age of antiscorbutics. See, for example, Statistical Report, II, 351, 360, 361; III, 186,193; Crimmins (ed.), "Mansfield's Report," 138, 238, 364.